I can just see him rolling his eyes. “Why are you sorry?”
“I haven’t been there.” I scoot down so my legs are under my covers and I turn, facing the wall, phone pressed to my ear.
“I’m going to pretend like you didn’t just apologize for something as stupid as that.”
“Levi…”
“No, come on, Bee. You’ve been a little preoccupied. You think I can’t understand that?”
“It doesn’t change the fact that I’m sorry about it. I want to be there and I can’t.”
The road around him goes quiet for a second, like he’s at a stoplight. “Maybe you need to get a different perspective on everything, Bee.”
“What do you mean?”
He pauses, his car turning off, the door shutting behind him. It sounds like he’s walking up the path to his house as he says, “Hey, can you hold on one second?”
“Sure.”
There’s the sound of him knocking on his door (I wonder briefly why he doesn’t use his keys) and it swinging open and shutting behind him. Except…at the same moment, my own front door opens and shuts. And then there are his footsteps in the hallway outside my door, and his gentle knock, nudging it open a few inches. “Everyone decent?” he asks, and then lets himself in.
I hang up, turn, and set my phone on the nightstand. A second later he’s there, wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me in for a kiss. It’s slow and warm and exactly the love I need, but also a distraction I don’t need.
“Bad, bad,” I say, with one last kiss, and pull back. “Very dangerous,” I whisper, my hand hovering between our mouths.
He kisses my fingers instead. “I’m sorry, I just couldn’t resist the opportunity.”
“Who let you in?”
“Millie.”
“That brat is going to die.”
“What?” he asks. “Don’t want to see me?”
“I do—I do want to see you.” I run my finger along the contours of his jawline and stare at his mouth a little too long. “Okay, I saw you, now you have to leave.”
“Oh, no. Not like that.” He stands and nudges me over, then rolls onto his stomach next to me, arms under his head, facing me. “This is nice, actually. Great mattress.”
“Levi. You could get so busted.”
“For doing literally nothing?”
I shrug, and I can’t resist rolling into him a little bit more. My arm stretches across his back and my hand fiddles with the side of his shirt. “Levi.”
“Yes?”
“What did you mean about a different perspective?”
He makes an O with his mouth. “Oh, right. Yeah—I mean that you need to let people do things for you sometimes.”
I bite my nails, looking at him closely. “I don’t want people to do things for me when I can’t do anything in return.”
“That’s not what we’re about.”
“But it’s not fair.”
“Life’s not fair.” He shrugs. “We move on.”
I don’t think I can. I close my eyes briefly. “Why did you ask if I loved you, then?”
I know it’s not fair to ask this, but I want to bring my point home. He questioned it then, which means he has even more of a right to question it now.
“Are you still hung up over that?” he asks, eyes wandering my face, searching for the answer. “That was weeks ago and I apologized.”
“I know you did. But it was the principle of it,” I say, using his own words against him. “I already felt like I was doing nothing.” I draw my eyebrows together. “That solidified everything I was worried about. I can’t be here for you and my dad. I just can’t.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I need to, in order for this to work.”
He must understand the gravity of what I’ve just said, what I’m implying, because he doesn’t respond right away. Instead, he moves to his side and captures my face in his hands, using a thumb on my chin to make me look at him. (I am caught; I have nowhere else to turn.) His eyebrows are raised a fraction and his hair flops over my pillow and I just want to tell him it will be okay.
Instead, I let him speak. “You aren’t just a summer fling, you know? You’re not a one-summer girlfriend who I’ll forget in a month.”
I close my eyes.
“You have to know that, Bee.”
I nod. “Yes,” I whisper, voice cracked.
With my eyes closed, his kiss is unexpected, but I sink into it without question. His lips are slow and tender and I want to cry because I love him so much and we’re breaking apart and I can’t fix it.
I’m so sorry, Levi.
“I love you,” he whispers, kissing the top of my lips one more time, and then my nose, and then my forehead as he tucks me against him.
“I love you most,” I say.
With those words, I prepare for the moment when I will walk away so he doesn’t have to.
Chapter 43
Friday morning dawns too soon for Levi and me, but at least we get our first taste of fall weather. (After the insane heat of August, everyone is thankful for a few rainclouds hovering on the horizon.) He meets me at the shop at six-fifteen sharp, grabbing me from behind as I’m unlocking the front door, kissing my cheek. I instantly feel the scruff on his cheek, where I am used to very smooth skin. I raise my hand to brush against his face. “What the heck is this?”
“Five ‘o clock shadow, duh.” He lets me go into the shop first and then closes the door behind me. I flip on the lights and turn to look at him. He catches me by surprise, because while he looks mostly the same (wild hair, beige pants, bright red sweater), he is different in two ways: the stubble around his mouth and along his jaw, and the glasses that sit on his nose.
“I’m soooo not used to this,” I say, raising an eyebrow. (But gosh-darn-it, he’s still so beautiful.) “Dude, you’ve never seen these before?” He seems incredulous.
I shake my head. “When, exactly, did you get them?”
“I’ve had them forever.”
“So, you wear contacts?” I ask. I turn and head for the computer, not wanting to show him that I’m feeling ridiculous. With the weight of everything, with the decision I am slowly inching toward making every single day, missing a detail like this (as small as it is) feels catastrophic.
“Yeah. My eyes are actually blue.”
I whirl on him. “WHAT?”
He laughs so hard that it’s silent and has him bent at the waist. He heaves. “I’m kidding, my God, I’m kidding. My eyes are most certainly brown. But I do wear contacts.”
I pull away when he reaches for me. “You’re mean,” I pout. (I’m only half-joking.) “Bee,” he growls. “I’ll make up for it.”
“Shut up.” I grab the trip sheets and list Tracy left for me on the desk and wave them in his face. “You’re not allowed to kiss me until we’ve finished this task. Tracy said no making out on the job.”
“One kiss is not…making out,” he huffs.
I shrug. “Rules are rules.” It’s a rule I’m making right now, because I feel funny, a little sick to my stomach. God. I’m running so hard and so far away, and he can’t see it, which means that he can’t and won’t stop me, which means that I’ll just keep running. Fear is at large. My heart hammers and my throat closes off and my ears only hear rushing blood.